


101 Vultures

by longhairandbarefeet



Category: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post Season 2, i don't really know yet - Freeform, inside Seth Gecko's thoughts, maybe some ot3 stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-03-02
Packaged: 2018-05-23 06:08:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6107476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longhairandbarefeet/pseuds/longhairandbarefeet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She comes back into his life like the storm raging outside, just as wild, unpredictable, and beautiful. She was always so beautiful, though. He tries to contain himself, make sure she isn’t some fucked up figment of his imagination because that’s happened to him before. </p>
<p>post-season 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I'm not afraid, I'm terrified

**Author's Note:**

> I had meant for this to be a one-shot, but it's looking at being a two or three shot instead. The title is from the song "101 Vultures" by Alex Winston, aka my Kate Fuller song. I hope you enjoy, and let me know what you think!

She comes back into his life like the storm raging outside, just as wild, unpredictable, and beautiful. She was always so beautiful, though. He tries to contain himself, make sure she isn’t some fucked up figment of his imagination because that’s happened to him before. 

“Kate?” 

Seth whispers. He is standing by the bar, it’s empty and it has been empty for hours. The only light is coming from the one above the liquor shelves. He really should have been gone hours ago, but something told him to stay around. He thinks he found the reason why, and she is standing in front of him. 

She doesn’t answer him, and it makes him wonder when she got so quiet. He remembers long days in a tiny beat up car with her, days where he couldn’t get her stop talking about whatever bullshit to distract them. He misses that, especially now, even misses the times she’d patronize him about his drug addiction and lone wolf complex. 

She keeps her eyes averted. Her face hung low as she lets rainwater drip into a puddle on the floor. He doesn’t notice that though, he is too focused on the blood. There is so much blood. It clings to her shirt, jeans, and hair like the smell of smoke clinging to a smoker. 

“Kate?”

He says louder, and her eyes bulge slightly. He knows she can hear him, knows she can hear the pleading tone in his voice. She should also know he doesn’t show that part of himself, even to people he cares most about. 

“I’m so cold.” Kate’s voice cracks when she says it, and she wraps her arms around her midsection. Seth feels stupid because he sees her dripping wet and shivering and he should have already wrapped his suit jacket around her as tightly as he could. 

“What happened, Kate?” Seth asks putting his jacket around her shoulders, his thumb grazing her blade and realizing just how cold she was. She continues to look away from him, and he think’s he hasn’t even made eye contact with her yet. It unsettles him. She was dead, suppose to be a life long regret he’d remember when he drank alone at night, but now she’s here. How was she here?

“I can’t remember.” 

He pulls a chair up for her from a nearby table, and she sits down, still shaking. She places her head in her hands, and he can hear sobs begin to escape her mouth. He wants to make it stop, everything. He just doesn’t know how. 

“What can’t you remember?” 

He asks, pulling one of her small hands into his, and beginning to rub his palms over hers. He’s going to continue until he feels her fingertips warm, and her hands feel just as nice as they used to when she’d press her fingers into his neck, and enable his addictions for those three months. 

“Anything.” 

 

+

“What do you mean she can’t remember anything?” 

“I mean she can’t remember anything, Richard. I don’t know how else to put it.” 

“That’s interesting...” 

“What the fuck does that mean?” He feels his lip twitch with irritation. Seth didn’t know what else to do besides call and tell his brother about the news. Richie came running at the mention of Kate, but once he got there he couldn’t speak to her. He thinks the guilt was too much on him. 

Seth looked over at her as Richie began to pace nervously; she was curled up in the corner of the furthest booth, her knees folded up with her chin pressed tightly to her kneecaps. 

“Clean slate, brother, She doesn’t hate us.” Richie pats his shoulder, and smiles widely. It’s true, even though Richie looks unconvinced as he says it. To Kate, they weren’t the notorious Gecko brothers who kidnapped her family, and ruined her life, not yet at least. Seth couldn’t keep that from her, any of it, it’s wrong and if she taught him anything when they were together it was that he’d tell her the truth. 

“I will tell her what happened,” Seth looks over at the booth again, and she is staring at them, her eyes lighting a match and setting him on fire with each passing second. He feels something in his chest tighten; he was so scared he’d never see her again, let alone see her alive. “I will tell her everything.”

+

He takes her to his Uncle Eddie’s house after that. Richie disappeared somewhere saying he needed to find some answers, and Seth simply nodded in response. He watched as Kate and Richie said goodbye, awkward and tense, and he wished she could just remember them. It would make everything easier. 

The house is empty when they get there, but it’s always empty. He wants her to get sleep, her eyes look tired, and he can see the little bags starting to form, the way they did in Mexico when they used to drive until they couldn’t stay awake any longer and the car would veer off into the gravel. 

“I need to shower.” Kate says meekly. She begins to rub the blood spots on her shirt, and let out a shallow sigh. Seth has so many questions; it miffs him that he can’t ask them, but a huge part of him doesn’t want to question what she is, if she’s alive. An intense image of him pressing his face to her chest to hear a heartbeat surfaces in his mind, and he scrunches his eyes shut tight thinking there will be nothing there to hear. He’ll save that for the morning. (His Uncle Eddie always told him everything is much clearer in the daytime.)

“Towels are in the closet, and I’ll see if I can find you something to change into.” 

Seth doesn’t know why, but his voice cracks like a teenager going through puberty. He lived with her for three months and never did his thoughts drift of her taking a shower, naked and wet, but now the thought of her standing in there with water falling down every curve of her body causes his mouth to go dry as the goddamn desert.

“Thank you, Seth.” She looks down at her feet, and bites at the corner of her lip. She said his name carefully, like it was going to be the wrong one. 

“I’ll be in here if you need anything.” 

She nods hesitantly, and disappears into the bathroom without another word. 

+

“I can’t sleep.” 

She is standing in his doorway, wearing the oversized tee shirt and plaid boxers he found for her in his duffle bag. It’s one of those hokey tee shirts she got for him in Mexico as a joke. It was on one of the few days she didn’t want to wring his neck, and they didn’t want to kill each other. He thought it would spark something inside her, and suddenly she’d remember everything. He was wrong, and he felt naïve for thinking it would be that easy. 

“Come here.” 

He scoots over, and lifts his blanket for her to crawl under it. It reminds him of one late night they had in the motel, a night where she complained of freezing, cold feet and insomnia, and an early morning where he woke up with her in his arms snoring softly. It all seemed a thousand years ago, a distant memory, another life. 

“You really don’t remember me?” 

“No.” Kate replies simply. She is buried under the blanket, and her eyes are closed. He watches her, waits for her to give some indication that this is all some joke she’s playing on him. 

“How’d you know where to find me, to find us?” She opens her eyes at that, and he can see he has truly stumped her. 

“I don’t know.” Kate replies, and turns her body so she is facing him. “I just did.”

He wonders if she knows she died, if she can feel it inside of her, and there is a gaping hole inside that’s keeping her awake. He wonders if she really did die, if there are bullet holes in her stomach, the place Richie said she was shot. He wonders if she’s human. He wonders about a lot of things nowadays. 

“Tell me something.” She prods quietly. 

“I’m exhausted.” 

“Tell me something I don’t know.” 

“Very funny.” Seth half smiles, and lifts his brow. He is happy that her sense of humor is still in tact. “What do you want to know?” 

“How did we meet?”

“It’s complicated.” Seth answers back quickly, and he can see in her face that that isn’t a satisfying enough answer for her. “Can I save this for tomorrow, where everything makes sense and I can tell you everything you want to know.” He sounds naïve, the same kind of naïve he used to call her all the time, but he doesn’t care. 

“Alright.” 

He falls asleep on his side of the bed, a foot away from her, and he wakes up with his face buried in her dark hair and his pillow left cold and abandoned on his side of the bed. He doesn’t remember coming over here to her, doesn’t remember wrapping his arms around her waist and pressing her as close as she could get to him. It feels familiar, the way she smells like lavender and sunlight, the way she snores, and suddenly the motel morning they woke up like this doesn’t seem as far away. 

+

Apart of him is nervous when she steps outside, nervous she’ll burst into flames the way her friend did when he was trying to save them, but the only thing that happens is her giving him a pointed look and a shy smile because he is staring unabashedly. 

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Kate asks almost nervous, like she grew an abnormality in the short walk from the foyer to the driveway.

“It’s nothing.” 

Seth replies watching her as she slips into the passenger seat, the exact same way she used to, so easily and ready to go on whatever fucked up adventure he had planned for them that day. “I almost forgot...” Seth reaches into his inside jacket pocket and pulls out a pair of cheap, black sunglasses that were circular, and oversized. It was the pair she picked out the first week of them traveling. He thought they were the most ridiculous things he’d ever seen. 

“You look like Elton John?” Seth had said to her when she had first put them on those months ago. He was pumping gas while she was picking out junk food for them to eat in place of eating dinner. She had a smile lingering on her lips as she pulled the sticker from the lenses and kicked her feet up on the dash. 

“Who’s that?” Kate replied twisting the bottle cap off of her orange soda, and watching him as he makes a disturbed and disappointed face, as if he already regretted his decision to agree to them traveling together. “I am just joking, Seth.”

“I like these.” Kate says bringing him back into the present. She looks at him like she’s waiting for his approval when she puts them on. Seth ignores his impulse to make the same joke, and instead he smiles at her, one that reveals the dimples hiding in his roughened cheeks. 

“They belong to you, princess.” Seth replies quickly. He then puts the car into drive, and backs out of the driveway slowly. She is already fiddling with the radio when he tells her they are going to Jacknife Jed’s. He hopes Richie is there, and he has some answers.


	2. I am not your altar, boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “You were too good for me.” Seth sees that she’s looking at him intensely now from his peripheral, and he continues his train of thought even though he should swallow up his words. They can only cause more harm than good. “Still are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another burst of inspiration! Thank you for all the kudos, and the lovely comment! :) I am having fun writing this. (I hope to have this finished within the week.) It's also unedited, so any error is my own.

“So?” Seth is sitting behind the big desk, while Kate sits with a patient expression in the chair in front of it. Richie looks at her before walking towards Seth, and laying his palms flat on the desk. He looks tired, light purple bags under his eyes, and it reminds Seth of when they were kids. When Richie would stay up all night reading, and Seth would throw his pillow over to his side of the room in tired frustration because the lamp light was keeping him awake. 

“I went to find Scott.” Richie says, and Seth looks to Kate to see if the name gives a reaction, but it doesn’t. “He’s a tough little sucker, though.” Richie laughs lightly, appreciating his own pun, and Seth rolls his eyes. It never fails for him to laugh at his own jokes.

“Where is he?” Seth asks.

“He never gave me the chance to actually explain, and instead tried to kill me.” Richie continued. “It was a pretty even fight given the circumstances, but eventually he got away.” 

“That’s all you found out, Richard?” 

“I talked to Santanico.” Richie says, sitting in the vacant chair beside of Kate. His quiet eyes find hers, like they always managed too, and they maintain eye contact. Seth thinks about the intimate moment between them at the Twister, and that Richie doesn’t connect with everyone, but he connects with her. They both do. 

“And?” Seth asks, voice crackly and unsure. 

“And, nothing.” Richie tore his eyes from hers, and looked back at Seth. “She doesn’t know anything, but she’s going to try to help.” 

+

Seth watches them. She is smiling, and not one of the fake ones she has been giving him all day. The kind that whisper ‘I’m okay’ and ‘I’m fine’ when she’s not, and he’s not, but Richie somehow get’s something genuine. He’s probably jealous, as he stands distractedly running inventory behind the bar. Seth just doesn’t know which one he’s more jealous of, and why he feels so left out in this singular moment. For so long it was Richie and him, and then Kate and him, but he doesn’t want to be the odd man out even though it’s his turn to be. He doesn’t want to be the one on the outside looking in. He has never done well there. 

+

“I think I remember something.” 

“What?”

“Would it be strange to say I remember a feeling?” Kate asks, and Seth looks deeply into her brilliant green eyes, and instead of making some sardonic remark he simply shakes his head.

“No, please tell me.” Seth replies softly, and apart of him wishes he could have been like this when they were traveling in Mexico. He could have given her simple, speedy responses instead of the repugnant ones that would roll of his perfectly sharp tongue. He wonders if she would have stayed if he were nicer, more understanding, gentler.

“I remember a big kitchen, and a beautiful woman, I think she was my mother, Seth, and she is humming to herself while she is baking a cake, and I can just smell the vanilla and cinnamon.” Kate pauses smiling, letting herself absorb the memory in it’s fullest. “I can just feel the comfort from that, the warmth of home.”

“That sounds like a good memory, Katie.” 

“Yeah.” Kate looks down, scraping her nails anxiously across the table, and glancing back to him. “Now, can you tell me how we met?” 

+

 

He tells her everything he knows about her, and it isn’t until he finishes when he realizes he knows a lot. He tells her the more obvious things, the hostage situation, the truth about her father, the Twister, Richie, and he leaves no detail out about Scott either. She doesn’t talk, but then again she doesn’t have to, her expressions are enough to drive him wild with dread. He tries to explain the aftermath of the Twister, but she shakes her head, and lets out a deep sigh. 

“I think that’s enough for now.” Kate stands, and runs her hands down the front of her jeans. “Thank you for being honest with me, I do mean that.” 

He is unconvinced that, that’s enough and that whatever positive light he was actually in is officially shattered. He rubs at the nape of his neck, feeling the hair that has grown too long around his collar while they sit in awkward silence. 

“Are you hungry?” 

+

“So did we,” Kate clears her throat, and he is driving them home so he can’t really see her expression, but he can guess she looks embarrassed for asking. “I mean, have we ever?” 

“No.” Seth says stoutly, clutching the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles have turned a ghostly shade of white. He tries not to sound phased even if he is. “It was never like that, sweetheart.” 

“Why not?” Kate asks. He looks over to her, and she’s staring straight at the road. He knows she isn’t trying to get a rise out of him, or trying to make him uncomfortable. He knows she just wants to know why a man would travel with girl without it being something sexual or getting too complicated. He could feed her lines about age differences, or that it wouldn’t have been a healthy coping mechanism for either of them, but he knows there is only one real reason he never tried to touch her on nights when he wanted to or kiss the sarcastic comments from her tart lips. 

“You were too good for me.” Seth sees that she’s looking at him intensely now from his peripheral, and he continues his train of thought even though he should swallow up his words. They can only cause more harm than good. “Still are.” 

+

“She told me about the nightmares.” Richie says to Seth one night, Kate is sleeping in the bedroom, and they are sitting on the couch trying to drink their troubles away. She has been back in their life for two weeks, and they haven’t found anything out about her yet. Her memory hasn’t gotten much better, and Seth fears that it never will. He can see in her eyes that she doesn’t trust him, but how could she? He may just have been a common thief, but it was his fault she lost everything. They can’t even find Scott again, and apart of Seth thinks they won’t. It’s like he disappeared after the first night. 

“What nightmares?” Seth replies, taking a giant sip of his whiskey, too big a sip because his eyes begin to burn and water. He wonders why she hadn’t told him about them, and why she feels comfortable enough to tell Richie. It doesn’t make sense, but nothing ever does.

“She never told you, huh?” Richie shakes his head, and Seth can see that he wonders what made her trust him over Seth. “She dreams of memories, but they aren’t real or they are distorted, more evil than the actual truth which doesn’t makes sense to me. It’s like someone is in her head is taking facts, and changing them.” 

“What the fuck does that mean?”

“She told me her dream last night, and it was about you.” Richie says sipping from his own glass. “She said in her dream you were both in a motel room, and that in it you were arguing about her being your partner, and you got so heated about it, you kissed her. She’s all messed up over it because she said it felt real, but she knows that wasn’t. It wasn’t real, was it Seth?” 

“Hell no,” Seth replies quickly, remembering the night vividly. He reached for his heroin when he should have just reached for her. “I mean the first part is, but I never tried to kiss her.”

“Did you want to?” Richie questions, setting his glass on the coffee table. He already knows the answer, and Seth doesn’t really have to say it, but he does have to at the same time. It would make whatever he is feeling in the pit of his stomach real. 

“Probably.” 

“See, that’s the difference between me and you, Seth.” Richie sits back against the cushions, stretching his arms behind his head, and closing his eyes languidly behind his glasses. “I actually kissed her when I wanted to.” 

 

+

It’s really cliché, the thing that only ever occurs in movies, but it happens to them. He is looking for her, and opens the door to the bedroom without knocking to find her standing in front of her mirror, naked. She’s rubbing her hands over her chest and tummy carefully, but when she sees his she turns to look at him slowly. He waits for her to scream at him, and run for something to cover up with, but she doesn’t. It intrigues him, but she has been doing that for the better part of their relationship. 

He can’t find a reason to look away. He rakes his eyes over her petite figure, making sure to look at every curve and slope of her body, but when his eyes find the small bullet shaped scars on her stomach he tries not to let himself panic. 

“I’m sorry.” Seth utters under his breath, and she tilts her head to the side, still standing completely exposed. He wants to reach out, and touch one of her breast, feel the warmth of her nipple under his palm, but he fights the urge. He doesn’t know why he’s apologizing, if it’s for walking in without permission or for something even bigger than that.

“I can’t feel them.” Kate scratches at the closed up holes, almost violently, and Seth reaches out for her then to make sure she doesn’t hurt herself and cause it to bleed. “ I can’t feel anything anymore.” 

He picks a quilt up from the bed, and wraps it around her shoulders, and it reminds him of the night she wandered in from the storm, bleary eyed, and scared. He doesn’t want her to be scared anymore. 

“I can fix that.” Seth says, pressing a warm kiss to her cheek, and proceeding to press another warm kiss to her forehead. “I will make you feel again.” 

+

He doesn’t know what he expects when he leaves Richie, and Kate to their own devices one evening, but when he returns home he finds them on the couch tangled together. His lips are sucking bruises onto her neck, and soft moans are escaping from her mouth. She isn’t wearing a shirt, and her bra is draped cinematically over the side lamp. Richie is kneading her left breast with his hand, and she is moving into his every touch.

Seth doesn’t know quite what to say, he should just shrug it off the same way he did at the Twister when found them. He could make some lame attempted joke, and move to the bedroom to sulk and drink about it alone, but he can’t avert his eyes. He can’t stop looking at her, and she can’t stop looking at him either. 

“Seth.” Kate breathes out like she’s been running a marathon, sweat glistening off of her forehead. He wonders how long they have been going at it like this, or if she was waiting for him so she could get a rise out of him. He looks at Richie then, sees that he looks just as confused as he is. His glasses are fogged up, and suit jacket is forgotten on the floor beside of the couch. 

“I’ll be in the other room.” Seth looks down at his hands, and forces a smile on his face because he’s a good liar, and he won’t let her win whatever game she is playing with him right now. “Goodnight Richie, Katie.” 

+  
“She was just using me.” Richie comes into Seth’s room ten minutes later. Seth is sitting against the headboard with a hand towel wrapped around his fist. He may have controlled his temper when they were laying in the living room, but the moment he walked into his bedroom he smashed the mirror above his dresser. It lay in tiny pieces on the floor, and in the ridges of his knuckles. Richie sits on the edge of the bed, and pulls a cigarette from his pocket. 

“I don’t know.” Seth says, and he rubs his unhurt hand over his face. He didn’t know Kate was capable of this. “I do know she can’t draw a wedge between us, brother. It’s happened one too many times, and she isn’t more special than the others who tried--”

“Shut up!” Richie shouts, his blue eyes bulging out. Seth wants to tell him to calm down, but Richie raises his hand to stop him, and continues his own train of thought. “She is special, and stop telling yourself she isn’t. Kate is the reason we are worth anything, and well she wants you.” 

“Why are you encouraging this?” Seth asks. Richie looks at the blackened ash on his lit cigarette, and smiles. 

“Because I love her, and she loves you.” Richie stands up, and pauses in the doorway. “And you’re in love with her too.” 

+

“What are you trying to prove?” 

He asks as she climbs into his bed an hour later, wearing that big, stupid shirt and the boxers he gave her again. Her hair is pulled into a messy ponytail, and goddammit if he doesn’t lift the blanket again for her to crawl under. He tries not to think about what Richie said less than an hour ago, but it’s haunting the current situation like an unexercised demon. 

“Seth.” She says his name again, the same breathy way she did on the couch when she was tangled up with his brother. It makes his stomach sink, and his big, brown eyes darken because something in the way she says it turns him on. It does things to him no one has ever done before, not Sonja, not even Vanessa. 

“Stop saying my name like that.”

“Seth.” Kate repeats, laying down beside of him and sliding closer, close enough so he could smell the fruity shampoo coming off her hair. Seth inhales the sweet scent, and wonders if just she could intoxicate him the way alcohol does. 

“Please stop.” Seth groans, and watches her severely. He can feel her shuffle under the blanket, and he knows she is removing the boxers he had given her. He knows this is a dangerous game to be playing, knows every part of his body wants to feel the fabric of her panties beneath the blanket. She’s so beautiful as she continues to pull the articles of clothing off her body, and when she lays back she’s left in only those panties. 

“Make me feel something, Seth.”

“You don’t want this.” Seth replies, swallowing harshly because his mouth is dry. He’s trying to convince himself of it too, trying to convince himself that neither of them wants to do this in the bed that belonged to his Uncle Eddie. That she’s too broken, and when she gets her memory back, she’ll regret it. 

“You know what’s funny.” Kate begins to put her clothes on, slipping the big shirt over her head, and continuing. “Ever since I found you, you are everything I want, Seth. I know you want me too.” 

He should probably let her put the rest of her clothes on, and turn over on the other side of the bed to fall asleep, but he reaches helplessly for the sleeve of her shirt, and brings her over to him. When she’s close, he begins to run his nose over the apple of her cheek, and she moves into his soft touch. Seth searches in the dark for her lips, the pink perfect ones he has been dying to kiss, and when they find him first he moans into them. Her mouth forceful against his like she’s also been waiting for this. 

“Take this off.” Seth pleads, pulling at the bottom of the shirt, and she obliges, slipping it over her head in one graceful motion. He takes this moment to look at her, the way her hair has fallen out of the ponytail, and lays messy around her face framing it perfectly. Her lips are already slightly swollen from the kiss he just gave her, and he knows he pressed a little too hard. Her eyes are shining at him, the beautiful green color in the moonlight glow of the bedroom, and they are glowing at him. “My God, you are so fucking beautiful.” 

“Kiss me, Seth.” 

“Don’t have to tell me twice, darling.”


End file.
